This is the 1st out of 9 volumes. This book is the revised and enlarged translation of the omonimous Italian book (1st ed. Memori-Asiatica, Aug. 2012; 3rd ed. April 2014). I want to thank Todd Portnowitz, the translator, who did an excellent job.Here is a description of the book and a Table of Contents.

When the capital of Tibet was still the mythical “Forbidden City”, a mysterious destination for the most adventurous explorers, when Nepal was covered with forests and swamps, swarming with dangerous beasts and forbidden to foreigners, when Italy was ruled by the Fascist regime greedily eyeing potential colonial possessions in Asia, a learned and adventurous man, the perfect embodiment of that era’s virile ideals, entered places where no Western man had before set foot: crossing glittering peaks of snow, desolate deserts and ruins of ancient cities, constantly challenging himself, he discovered archaeological treasures from past civilizations.Even today, in the East as well as in the West, the name of this intrepid Italian explorer and insatiable researcher is cloaked in an aura of legend.
One could hardly imagine a richer and more exciting life than that of Giuseppe Tucci (1894-1984), the scholar who may quite rightly be considered one of the fathers of modern Oriental Studies and a central protagonist of Fascist cultural policy in Asia: from his first expeditions to the valleys of the Himalayas and the plains of the Ganges, to his diplomatic activity in Japan as spokesman for the Duce; from his encounters with scholars and leaders such as Gandhi, Tagore, the XIV Dalai Lama, Mircea Eliade and Giovanni Gentile, who was his great protector together with Giulio Andreotti, to the archaeological excavations in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran in more recent years; a human and intellectual adventure inextricably linked to the history of modern Italy, which he himself helped to forge.

An adventure that can be traced in the pages of this book, where the pace of a thrilling narrative combines with the scientific and historical reconstruction of the Fascist policy in Asia, and of Tucci’s precious creation, the powerful Italian Institute for the Middle and Far East. A history based on eyewitness accounts and historical documents, such as the original and unpublished correspondence between Tucci and Andreotti, Gandhi, Tagore, the XIV Dalai Lama, Mircea Eliade, Giovanni Gentile, the Raj Guru of Nepal, and the historian D. R. Regmi, and the previously unknown notes of Mussolini. An adventure retraced in the pages of this book that reads like an adventure novel.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME 1

1 Index of Maps in Volume 1
xxiii Index of Figures in Volume 1
xxv Preface to the English Edition
xxix Introduction
xxxi Acknowledgements
lxv Note on the Text

In a few days Il Duce’s Explorer: The Adventures of Giuseppe Tucci and Italian Policy in the Orient from Mussolini to Andreotti. With the Correspondence of Giulio Andreotti should be out. Yesterday the graphic designer has finished the cover and today the whole book should go to the printer.

The book is the 1st out of 9 volumes and it’s the enlarged and revised English translation of the Italian bookL’Esploratore del Duce. In this version I have also added some 50 original photos.

The endorsement on the back cover has been written by Michael Witzel, Wales Professor of Sanskrit, Dept. of South Asian Studies, Harvard University, whom I thank.
I want also to thank Paul Arpaia, Professor of History at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and H-Italy Editor, Guglielmo Duccoli, Director of L’Illustrazione Italiana, and Sumit Guha, Professor of History at The University of Texas at Austin and H-Asia Editor, who have both written very flattery words on this book, which are included in the first page after the inside front cover. All the above mentioned scholars have also read the Italian book.

As Italy takes up arms and Mussolini sets his eye on supplanting the British Crown – a fact elegantly and rigorously uncovered by Garzilli in these pages – Giuseppe Tucci manages to maneuver his way through the treacherous landscapes of the Himalayas and of Fascist politics to emerge as the country’s foremost scholar and archaeologist of the Orient. His achievement is monumental, and Garzilli’s monumental biography brings him joyously to life, through archival documents, personal letters, travelogues, lectures, interviews, articles, photographs, films, and her own tireless travels. Here is a hunt in search of a hunter. (Michael Witzel, Wales Professor of Sanskrit, Dept. of South Asian Studies, Harvard University)

I found the film, and still do, to be very moving. It is a reworking of a novel, of the same name, by the Romanian historian of religion, Mircea Eliade. The film features Dominique Matei as its central protagonist (and indeed, the English translation and the introduction of the novel was written by Matei Calinescu) and is a true glorification of the Oriental disciplines. What’s amazing is that the girlfriend of Dominique, after undergoing shock, begins to speak Sanskrit. And who do they call in as an interpreter? Giuseppe Tucci himself—a friend, in real life, of Mircea Eliade.

In Youth without Youth, Tucci is defined as the highest authority of European Sanskrit and Buddhist philosophy—which indeed was the case. He was also presented as the president of IsMEO—which, though its doors are now shut, was at time of the film (in the mid-to-late 1930s) quite prosperous and active.

In truth, the founder and president of the powerful institute of IsMEO was Senator Giovanni Gentile, until his murder in April 1944, by a partisan group. Tucci, instead, served as its executive vice president, until his purge and the compulsory administration of the institute, in 1944. In fact IsMEO and Rome had been elected by the Duce as the “spiritual and ideal guide of Italy and the world.” This is the reason why I call Tucci the explorer, scholar and political “Indiana Jones” of Mussolini.

I came to translate Enrica Garzilli‘s monumental biography of Giuseppe Tucci through Ann Goldstein, the renowned translator of Elena Ferrante’s work, who mentioned the project to me in January of 2014. Shortly after I was in touch with Enrica, and by March I found myself immersed in a text that covers over 1,360 characters—from poets to politicians, scholars, saints, and spies—and deals deeply with languages and cultures—Tibetan, Nepalese, and Indian above all—that I had little or no knowledge of. Suddenly I was confronted with precise Italian terms for Buddhist and Hindu concepts already foreign to me in English, typing out fifteen-letter words with diacritics I’d never seen. And translating is not simply a matter of converting one language into another, but of infusing the words with context. When the context is a foreign culture (or cultures) the work doubles (or triples!).

Living in New York City I have the good fortune of being surrounded by museums; since beginning the translation I have twice visited the Asia society, once for an exhibit featuring treasures from a Tibetan monastery, Golden Visions of Densatil, —including the photographs of Pietro Francesco Mele taken while on an expedition with none other than Giuseppe Tucci—and again to see an exhibit of Buddhist sculpture from Myanmar; I made two trips, as well, to the Rubin museum of Himalayan and Indian art in Chelsea. Almost more than to the artifacts my eye was drawn to the title cards, which are a glossary of cultural terms—stupa, thangka, bodhisattva, Vishnuite, Shivaite—and all thankfully used properly (the Buddha is capitalized, other buddhas are not, and so on), which served both as research and to stimulate my interest in the material.

Garzilli’s approach is nothing if not exhaustive—her hunt for Tucci’s story brought her to libraries and archives throughout Italy, in Tibet, Nepal, India, London, Washington, Boston and beyond—and to carry that thoroughness over into English has been a large part of my job as a translator. My experience before this project was principally as a poetry translator, where exactitude can often be a matter of creative interpretation and a deep sense of musicality, with room to improvise. In scholarly writing, as I quickly learned, exactitude is exactitude: letting the Latin-rooted verbs wield all their Latin precision; regarding the punctuation with a lawyer’s eye; rendering original quotations without flourish or fancy. The tedium nearly overwhelmed me. I longed for the spaciousness of poetry.

But then I had a draft of the introduction, which meant I soon had Enrica’s sharp corrections. Her intense queries, her suggestions, her second-guessing of a word choice, a comma, a dash, tightened and improved my sentences. They revived the text. Bearing her counsel in mind, I returned to the translation with a keener sense of the book’s tone and intent, and began to find joy in exactitude. Not only my knowledge of Italian, but as a result of translating Enrica’s work, of corresponding with her over the numerous drafts and revisions, my knowledge of English has grown immensely, the ways the language can be stretched and twisted and coaxed into expressing more, and more precisely.

Which is not to say that the book leaves no room for poetry or adventure. Tucci bounds across borders, vacuuming up languages and cultures, speaking boldly before his peers, making enemies and friends with equal vigor. We follow him to Santiniketan, during the early days of Tagore’s Visva-Bharati University. The fascinating world of academia under Fascist rule is revealed, the hoops to be jumped through, the money and promotions to be applied for, the men of power to whom one must appeal.

Learning of Tucci’s own guru, Carlo Formichi, of his pet mongooses and his absurd palanquin ride up a mountain, was a particular pleasure of translating the first volume. This biography is filled with life and lives, policies and places, it spans the globe, and that Ms. Garzilli has managed to hold it all up on her own is an Atlas-like achievement.

Il Duce’s Explorer: The Adventures of Giuseppe Tucci and Italian Policy in the Orient from Mussolini to Andreotti: With the Correspondence of Giulio Andreotti is the English translation of this work. A wonderful English, I believe, for which I give thanks to my translator, Todd Portnowitz. A qualified young professional in love with Italy, an incredible smart and talented guy whose job is just that—to translate Italian into English.

Todd is a methodical worker and has a keen sense of language and of the beauty of words, a taste and enthusiasm for syntax, meaning, for rendering content in its most elegant form. But Todd is not only that: he is a poet, and what a poet!—as well as a musician and songwriter. His work is excellent, in fact, particularly in capturing Tucci’s own voice, and in translating original documents of the time and literary passages.

Of course the editing of his translation was no easy task. Todd was not used to the language of history, so distant from poetry, and knew very little about Asia, politics, and the like. Meanwhile, I am as fussy as they come—I want a translation to convey exactly what I mean. Moreover, while I may accept a slight change to my language, as long as the meaning is conserved, in order to adapt it to the English, I demand that all original documents are translated word for word. Mistakes included. That is, I have asked for a diplomatic translation of these passages. Very little or virtually nothing should be left to interpretation, particularly now, at a distance of a few decades, and in this completely different context. We have no right to alter their words, their intentions, their meaning and, if possible, their style.

Three versions of the text —with minor changes and ameliorations, questions, points of discussion—went back and forth between New York and Milan. And I am very glad that Todd questioned me and my various solutions, that he challenged me, that more often than expected we came to the same conclusion. And that he improved the text. I hope that he learned from me as much as I learned from him.

This lengthy post is all to say one simple thing: Thank you Todd! I am grateful to you. And I am happy to have chosen you, among many others, to work with. And to have met you here in Milan!

Who can forget the archaeologist and adventurer, Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones? Well, Giuseppe Tucci was not only a famed archaeologist and adventurer, but a famed scholar, a famed explorer, a famed collector of manuscripts and artworks, a famed spokesman for Mussolini in India, Nepal, and Japan (where his propaganda activity was fundamental to the diplomatic relations that led to the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy joined on November 6, 1937), a spy for the Fascist Regime, and for all his life a renowned lady-killer